NARI withdraws from CR accreditation process

For the past five years, NARI has been pursuing accreditation of the Certified Remodeler (CR) program through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), and has made unimaginable strides in the overall improvement of the CR program that would otherwise not have been possible.

As with all accreditation programs, there is an established timeframe within which all processes, activities, paperwork, testing, etc. must be completed.  Dan Taddei, the Certification Board members, and many others have successfully completed all of these requirements with the one exception of having enough CR exams completed by the end of this year, thus the number of candidates taking the CR exam is not high enough to yield the type of statistical analysis necessary for ANSI to validate the CR exam.

While we do have the option to extend our application by an additional three months, the Certification Board, with support by the Board of Directors, has made the decision to voluntarily withdraw NARI’s application for ANSI accreditation at this time and take advantage of the knowledge we’ve gained over the past five years, and continue to improve our systems while increasing the number of completed CR examinations to a more statistically valid number.

Although NARI’s accreditation timeframe has been temporarily placed on hold, the Certified Remodeler program—and all other NARI certifications—have been strengthened by this process. NARI is committed to raising the bar on professionalism within the remodeling industry through its certifications, and the lessons learned through this process will cross-pollinate and improve all NARI’s certifications.  NARI’s Certification Board now has a job task analysis tool that allows it to continually review the exam to identify the skills and knowledge sets critical to the success of a remodeler. This process is ongoing, and this tool will be used to continually evaluate and update all NARI’s certification exams. NARI also has updated and strengthened its continuing education requirements and its administrative processes.

Although we are very disappointed that we did not beat the clock, we are absolutely thrilled with the positive transformations that have occurred to the CR program as a direct result of the accreditation pursuit.  At such time when NARI has the number of members taking the exam to better evaluate the statistical validity, the association will re-examine initiating the formal accreditation process again.

We welcome feedback and questions, which can be directed Dan Taddei, director of education, at dtaddei@nari.org or (847) 298-9200.